Beyond Capitalist Enclosure, Commodification and Alienation: Postcapitalist Praxis As Commons, Social Production and Useful Doing
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This is a repository copy of Beyond capitalist enclosure, commodification and alienation: Postcapitalist praxis as commons, social production and useful doing. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/139533/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Chatterton, P orcid.org/0000-0001-9281-2230 and Pusey, A (2020) Beyond capitalist enclosure, commodification and alienation: Postcapitalist praxis as commons, social production and useful doing. Progress in Human Geography, 44 (1). pp. 27-48. ISSN 0309-1325 https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518821173 © The Author(s) 2019. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Progress in Human Geography. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Beyond capitalist enclosure, commodification and alienation. Postcapitalist praxis as commons, social production and useful doing. Paul Chatterton, School of Geography, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT. UK. [email protected] Andre Pusey, School of the Built Environment mmand Engineering, Leeds Beckett University, LS2 8AG. UK. [email protected] Introduction In recent years we have been impressed by the growing range of work in geography that continues to build nuanced and complex understandings of the sho condition. A whole range of issues have received scholarly attention including: land, labour and migrant struggles (Davies and Isakjee, 2015; Harrison and Lloyd, 2012; Mackenzie et al., 2003; Ahmed, 2012; Jenkins, 2014; Correia, 2008; Lewis et al., 2015); climate activism, anti-globalisation and radical protest movements (Montagna, 2006; Chatterton, 2010; Lopez, 2013; Wainwright and Kim, 2003; Lessard-Lachance and Norcliffe, 2013; Routledge 2015; Pusey et al., 2012; Russell, 2014; Sundberg, 2007; Halvorsen, 2015; Nordås and Gleditsch, 2007); and, anti-gentrification struggles especially W “ H N W . At the same time, geographers continue to propose a range of progressive alternatives to articulate a more equal and sustainable world in diverse areas including community and popular education (Motta, 2013; Evans et al., 2007; mrs kinpaisby, 2008; Noterman and Pusey, 2012; Pusey, 2017); alternative and community economies (Gibson-Graham and Cameron, 2013; North and Huber, 2004; North, 2014; Cornwell, 2012; Taylor, 2014); food justice and urban agriculture (Ghose and Pettygrove, 2014; Tornaghi, 2014; Heynen, 2010; Crossan et al., 2016); commons and radical democracy (Springer, 2011; Bresnihan and Byrne, 2015); and, low impact housing (Jarvis, 2011; Thompson, 2015). 1 This paper is focussed on the broader agenda for change and analytical insights that can be discerned from this combination. We contend that it takes the form of a novel agenda for postcapitalist geographical enquiry and praxis which combines critique of the current capitalist system and propositions of alternatives beyond it. We take our cue from the formative work of Gibson-Graham (2006) who first elaborated on the term postcapitalism as a way of exploring the diverse ways that postcapitalist subjects, economies, and communities can be fostered beyond capitalism. Our aim in this paper is twofold. First, we have a normative intention to further raise the profile of what postcapitalist analysis might mean for geography and geographers at a time when (Dinerstein, 2014) that are possible beyond our deeply unequal, crisis-laden and often despondent present (Castree, 2010; Derickson et al., 2015). Second, we want to further understand the complexities of the uses of postcapitalism by reflecting on different strands of thinking and how they relate to various terrains of capitalist transformation. From the outset, there are some significant caveats. Capitalism is a limited and shorthand analytical device that only partly explains our unequal world alongside a range of others, including patriarchy, hierarchy and racism. Moreover, capitalism and postcapitalism are not absolute and mutually exclusive conditions. They are dynamic and shifting tendencies, understood as much in relation to each other as separate entities. Drawing on the work of John Holloway (2010), we see postcapitalism as a set of activities and ideas that have multiple and interconnecting characteristics simultaneously in, against and beyond the present condition. There is an aspect of not having a choice but to continue life despite capitalism, and simply deal with its exploitation and alienation. At the same time, there are always opportunities for opposing capitalism, defining oneself against the status quo and taking whatever tactical opportunities, scholarly or otherwise, present themselves to slow and replace it. Finally, there is an aspect of living beyond capitalism, drawing on prefigurative action to enact future possibilities in the present (Springer, 2014). 2 Finally, postcapitalism is not a roadmap for a utopian future. There are scenarios beyond capitalism where the social fabric degrades and global society spirals out of control through, for example, widespread war, disease, ecosystem collapse, isolationism and repressive social control. While those futures could unfold, and indeed are unfolding in certain parts of the world, that is not the line of enquiry here. Instead, this paper focuses on a critical exploration of the various conditions that can generate transformative social futures that significantly depart from the material and discursive content of the capitalist present. The paper begins by contextualising postcapitalism within three terrains of transformation (Wright, 2010) in which we see the dynamic interplay of the crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism (Panitch and Gindin, 2011) around enclosure, commodification and alienation, with a parallel set of postcapitalist tendencies around the common, social production and useful doing. The paper then critically interrogates three bodies of work which interrogate postcapitalism and point to a heterogeneous range of routes beyond capitalist economies and social relations: the feminist- oriented, neo-Marxist perspective employed by the Community Economies Collective and exemplified within the work of JK Gibson-Graham; the post-work perspective which seeks to accelerate the processes of technological evolution and speed up and make society more complex on the basis that the only way out of capitalism is through it; and finally autonomous, Open Marxist and anarchist influenced approaches to social-reproduction, which privilege politically autonomous ways of reproducing ourselves and our communities (Bonefeld et al, 1995; Clough and Blumberg, 2012). We then reflect on platform cooperatives as an example of postcapitalism in practice. We conclude by briefly exploring the social and spatial landscape of postcapitalism. There is an emergent future agenda for postcapitalism that can be usefully deployed within the discipline through, for example, creating a relational and knowledge common, focusing on the socially useful aspects of academic production, and creating opportunities for useful doing in our daily work. Capitalism and postcapitalism: three terrains of transformation 3 Our discussion of postcapitalism requires some kind of positioning in relation to capitalism. We take our definitional starting point from the recent work of Erik Olin Wright (2010) who reminds us of the need to clarify and develop the contemporary case against capitalism. In summary this involves the following: that capitalist class relations generate unnecessary human suffering, especially through exploitation and competition, and while it creates conditions to live flourishing lives it blocks the extension of these conditions more generally; it limits principles of democratic political equality and individual freedom through the unequal distribution of private property and wealth generation and is incompatible with an equality of opportunity, especially as it imposes unchosen burdens on others; it has inbuilt inefficiencies especially in the deficiency of public goods, the commodification and over-consumption of natural resources, the creation of negative externalities, tendencies towards monopolies and the costs of social inequality; and, it is based on negative social and environmental consequences of the bias towards consumerism and the erosion of broadly held values such as safety, community and spirituality, in contrast to the promotion of militarism, privatisation and competition. While it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth stressing that there has been a long-standing commitment to critically exploring capitalism within the discipline of geography. This work has covered diverse areas including, but certainly not limited to, militarism, developmentalism, imperialism, dispossession, intersecting with a range of critical perspectives including patriarchy, racism and